Conservative political podcasts like Steve Bannon's are 11 times more likely to spread lies than liberal ones, study finds

• The Brookings Institution reviewed dozens of top political podcasts and how many lies they air.
• Conservative hosts shared by far the most falsehoods, with Steve Bannon on top.

A major study reviewing the top US political podcasts found that conservative-leaning shows are vastly more likely to include misinformation — with Steve Bannon's War Room coming way out ahead.

Bannon called it a "badge of honor," according to The New York Times.

The study released by the Brookings Institute this week reviewed more than 36,000 episodes released on Apple Podcasts up to January 2022, by 79 leading podcasters across the political spectrum. They included Bannon, Dan Bongino, Seth Myers, Ben Shapiro, and Trevor Noah.

"Conservative podcasters were 11 times more likely than liberal podcasters to share claims fact-checked as false or unsubstantiated," the study said.

Major topics of misinformation were the 2020 election and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Fifty-six of the podcasters reviewed shared false or unsubstantiated claims at some point, the study found. But 10 of those were responsible for a full 60 per cent of the misleading material found. And of those, all were conservative-leaning, the study said.

Right behind Bannon's "War Room" was "The Charlie Kirk Show," "The Rush Limbaugh Show," and "The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show," all of which shared falsehoods in at least 15 per cent of their episodes, the study said.

The authors worked by comparing transcripts against a list of common fact-checks and keywords. The study noted it had taken the potential for liberal bias in the referenced fact-checks into account.

In total, more than 70% of the podcasts reviewed shared false claims at some point, including those described as "liberal," "moderate," or "unknown." But repeat offenders — podcasts that did this over the course of anything between five and 200 episodes — leaned overwhelmingly to the right.

While conservatives were more willing in general to challenge a false claim, conservative hosts were far more likely to challenge a false claim — almost half the time — if it came from a liberal guest than a fellow conservative — where more than 90% of false claims went unchallenged, the study found.

Ben Shapiro stood out as the host most likely to challenge any false claim, whether it came from his ideological peers or not, it said.

The study noted that it included far more conservative podcasts in its sample as a result of choosing those that are most popular on Apple Podcasts.

The sheer rate of production adds to the issue, it said, with conservative podcasters making longer and more frequent episodes.

While the strongly left-leaning "Pod Save America" puts out its roughly hour-long show about twice a week, Steve Bannon's "War Room" goes out as many as four times a day.